{
"data": {
"id": 154279,
"accession_number": "1988.88",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Lehigh Valley Railroad: Bear Lake, LVRR, c. 1898\u201399. William H. Rau (American, 1855\u20131920). Albumen print from gelatin dry plate negative; image: 43.5 x 51.9 cm (17 1/8 x 20 7/16 in.); paper: 45.3 x 53.7 cm (17 13/16 x 21 1/8 in.); matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1988.88",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Bear Lake, LVRR",
"series": "Lehigh Valley Railroad",
"creation_date": "c. 1898\u201399",
"creation_date_earliest": 1893,
"creation_date_latest": 1904,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "albumen print from gelatin dry plate negative",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "Photography",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 43.5 x 51.9 cm (17 1/8 x 20 7/16 in.); Paper: 45.3 x 53.7 cm (17 13/16 x 21 1/8 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.435,
"height_inch": 17,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.519,
"width_inch": 20,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
},
"paper": {
"height": 0.453,
"height_inch": 17,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.537,
"width_inch": 21,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.125
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.559,
"height_inch": 22,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.66,
"width_inch": 26,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in negative: \"570 BEAR LAKE. L.V.R.R. / WILLIAM H. RAU, PHILA.\"; in pencil on verso: \"LVF 78.1158\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311875,
"title": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997).",
"opening_date": "1996-11-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 194095,
"title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007).",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA, March 17 - May 14: \"Photographs: Recent Acquisitions,\" Gallery D.",
"opening_date": "2017-03-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, November 20,1996 - February 2, 1997: \"Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art.\"",
"opening_date": "1997-02-02T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (6/24/07 - 9/16/07); \"Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art\", no exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Lehigh University Art Gallery, Lehigh, PA",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Charles Isaacs Photographs, Inc.), New York, NY",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "September 22, 1988",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "A distinguished commercial and documentary landscape photographer in Philadelphia, William H. Rau was commissioned in the 1890s by the Lehigh Valley Railroad to execute a series of scenic views along a new line. Realizing photography's advertising potential, the railroad company employed Rau to select picturesque subjects that might be seen while traveling by rail. Contact-printed from a mammoth plate negative, the landscape's shapes, textures, and tonal ranges are richly detailed.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79941141"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1988.88-bear-lake-lvrr"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 271",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Green, Tyler. Emerson's Nature and the Artists: Idea As Landscape, Landscape As Idea. Munich: Prestel, 2021.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 128, fig. 61",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1988.88",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.88/1988.88_web.jpg",
"width": "1062",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "695833",
"filename": "1988.88_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.88/1988.88_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2860",
"filesize": "5745639",
"filename": "1988.88_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.88/1988.88_full.tif",
"width": "4423",
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"filesize": "49394176",
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}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 154279,
"creators": [
{
"id": 805,
"description": "William H. Rau (American, 1855\u20131920)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "William H. Rau American, 1855-1920\r\n\r\nWilliam Herman Rau was a Philadelphian with close ties to that city's photographic activities. The son of photographer George Rau, William married Louise Bell, daughter of photographer William Bell. He had worked for Bell until purchasing his father-in-law's company in 1878. Louise Bell Rau later exhibited her own work in pictorialist circles. Among Rau's other associates were his brother George, with whom he opened a photographic studio in 1885, the well-known photographic publisher Edward L. Wilson, and John Moran, brother of landscape artist Thomas Moran.\r\n\tIn 1874 Rau had joined an international expedition to the South Seas to photograph the transit of Venus, working with John Moran on the project. He then worked intermittently in the southwest United States, including a period with William Henry Jackson. In 1881 he accompanied Edward Wilson to Egypt, where he made an extensive set of stereoviews and possibly some larger prints, although these have never been identified. He worked in Philadelphia during the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and was later the official photographer for the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland.\r\n\tBest known for his railroad and landscape images, Rau was hired in 1890 by the Pennsylvania Railroad and in 1899 by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, for which he produced a series of views from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. He also recorded the Johnstown flood and the 1904 Baltimore fire. Today, Rau is important for his position linking, through subject and style, key aspects of photography in the 19th and 20th centuries. T.W.F.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1855",
"death_year": "1920",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1988-09-22T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1893,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1898\u201399",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 07:58:43.327000"
}
}